My Take | De-dollarisation is the new decolonisation
- Everyone, whether America’s vassals or enemies, needs to move away from the dollar when their greenback-denominated assets can be taken from them on Washington’s say-so
To reword Charles Baudelaire about the greatest trick played by the devil was to have convinced the world he didn’t exist, let’s just say the greatest trick the United States ever pulled was convincing the world it wasn’t an empire.
To be so convincing, you first need to convince yourself. That’s not too difficult as most Americans like to think their country was and is a democratic republic. This highly convenient (self-)deception was epitomised by George W. Bush when he told West Point graduates in June 2002 – after the invasion of Afghanistan, but before that of Iraq – that “America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish”.
In his telling, America had no territorial ambitions, never sought an empire and only wanted freedom for themselves and others. Of course.
How ironic that this came from someone who presided over, and then squandered, the short-lived unipolar moment when the US truly dominated the whole world.
In the old days, to win independence meant fighting to recover your land. In the 21st century, securing your autonomy means freeing yourself from dollar domination.
Ancient empires controlled land; modern empires run the world economy
Empires of old controlled large swathes of other people’s lands and resources. The transformation of the world with the emergence of capitalism meant Anglo-American empires came to control the global economy as the source of true hegemonic power, not just through land. Some scholars have argued the Dutch did it first in the 17th century, but it was on a much smaller scale.
